Professional To Consumer: How The Recording Industry Has Shifted

     Let me paint a picture for you.  You are in a band and want to record an EP.  So you call around to professional recording studios until you find one you like.  You book the time and spend a few days in the studio tracking.  Then the engineer mixes the tracks and you get your finished product.  Now you have to build up to a release of the EP.  Finally after a long campaign, the consumer gets their hands on the music.  

     The scenario I just describe is that of the old model of the recording industry.  Recording and distributing music hardly goes through that process anymore.  Now don't get me wrong, there are still many labels and bands that prefer to work in this method and I applaud them for it.  However, the recording industry has been undergoing a major shift in recent years from a professional centric system, to a consumer centric one.  So what exactly does this mean?  Well let me explain it.  

     Since the dawn of digital recording the technology has been getting more compact and easy to use.  Now anyone with a laptop can record and mix music.  Since recording is more accessible and affordable than ever, it has caught the attention of the consumer market.  Consumers are now recording themselves and their own bands instead of paying to record at a professional studio.  Even though the quality if vastly different, the incentive of not having to pay loads of cash is appealing.  Since the demand for consumer recording has skyrocketed, it only makes sense that the manufacturers would follow that path.  Manufacturers like BLUE have halted their professional series microphones and focused on consumer grade products.  They have shifted their niche focus and opened up a whole new market in the process.  Many other companies have entered the market to just focus on the consumer.  IK Multimedia is a company that just makes products for mobile devices.  Their niche is the mobile industry and they have seen much success.  

     So to conclude, the recording industry has taken a major shift to the consumer market.  Since the technology is only getting more convenient, I don't see this trend fading anytime soon.  So if you are a professional in the recording industry it may be wise to think about how you can make this new shift work for you.  I have seen many professional studios close because they refused to shift their way of doing business to keep up with the current demand.  In a future post I will discuss ways that professionals int he industry can adapt to the changing business. 

-Jon